Blood Red Meal
by mgsylvester
Summary: A failed mission leaves Natasha coming apart at the seams.


**So, I've decided that what I really want to do with my writing is make people _feel_. So, this is my first attempt. **

**Warnings for death and violence and blood and language.**

* * *

Natasha makes dinner.

She makes it because there is nothing left to do, and she hasn't eaten in twenty four hours. She hasn't slept in 52.

It doesn't matter; she won't sleep for a long time. Even though its two fifteen in the morning and she's still burned and bloodied and bruised, she makes dinner.

There's nothing left.

A sooty hand reaches into an unfamiliar cabinet. She doesn't spend much time here in her room at HQ. She hasn't even been inside for a long time. Her home is now at Stark tower, but she can't go back. She won't go back. Never again.

She finds an old pewter colored pot and looks at it for a moment. She sees here own reflection and flinches away. There are ghosts in mirrors, you know.

She has too many ghosts.

The fluorescent light shines unkindly on the surface of the kitchen. The linoleum looks dirtier and the tiled back-splash behind the sink seems to have some sort of mold growing on it. She ignores this, ignores all of it, and focuses on the pot.

She turns the tap on and puts the pot underneath the water. It splashes against the side, cold and wet and stinging. There is rain in her ears, though it is not raining outside. It is the rain from a different time, a different part in the sob story of her life.

The pot fills painstakingly slowly, but when it's done, she sprinkles some salt into the water. She puts the pot on the burner and clicks it on.

Natasha leans back and watches it.

* * *

There was no thunder. The rain wasn't Thor's. It was just raining, the bone-chilling kind of spitting rain that seems to come from the heavens in torrents of wet spite.

They touched down during the dreary afternoon, and all were instantly soaked. No one seemed to mind. It was just rain. They had a job to do.

There was an AIM sleeper cell nestled in the mountains, a place where poison and science came together until everything that it touched was unrecognizable. This was personal for Tony, so everyone was there. Everyone was serious and focused, unlike during previous missions.

"Extraction at 2100," Hill said in her ear, The Quinjet was long-gone, and the only thing left was the cold reminder of what time the job needed done by.

It should have been easy.

There had been a previous recon mission, and they had all the information. At the guard exchange in twenty minutes, Natasha and Clint would take them out. That gave them four hours before the next guard exchange along the perimeter.

Then the team would slip in, Clint would take the roof, Natasha and Steve at the side door, and Tony and Bruce through a second floor window. Thor would stay outside, asses threats from there. Once inside, they all had different jobs.

Tony and Bruce were to get in the surveillance room. First and foremost, they were to cut video feed and any alarms they'd set off. Then there primary goal was the information. There was no such thing as a secure server when it came to Tony Stark, and Bruce knew a hell of a lot about the science. Tony would collect, and Bruce would quickly look over it. If anything went wrong, whether with the alarms or the science inside of the building, a quick call through the comm. link would set it all right.

The rest would wait five minutes and go in. Clint would slink in through the roof and into the main warehouse, where the larger science experiments were conducted. There was a catwalk there he could perch on and act as a silent angel of death. He was mainly on lookout.

Natasha and Steve had the main job. They were to take the side door and place the explosives, silently arming them. They'd start on the side hallways and offices, and anyone who saw them would be silenced immediately.

They'd underestimated AIM.

It was supposed to be a smooth, quiet mission. It was a tiny place in a tiny city. Not very important. It was the weekend. Since AIM had once been a legitimate company, most of the workers probably weren't even there. They didn't need those people, anyway. Those were the innocents. The scientists who still thought they worked for a legitimate cause. The secretaries that felt secure enough to leave at night, unknowing what they were leaving behind. Only the higher-ups and the science experiments lingered, and those, as always, were the target.

It was supposed to be an easy mission.

But then it wasn't.

* * *

Natasha makes the sauce.

It is partially home aide, because ever since Bruce had showed her how to doctor up a can of Ragu, sauce straight from the can had never tasted as good.

She only has off-brand, the cheap stuff, but she takes it out of the cabinet anyway. She rustles through the drawers and finds a half-rusted can opener.

Metal grinds against metal.

She flinches away from the sound, no longer seeing her own kitchen. She's back in that warehouse and she's screwing up, and oh fuck, she screwed up and everything is falling apart around her. Metal screams and burns and she's running.

And then the can pops open.

Blood red sauce gets poured into another pan and she turns on the burner underneath it. She procures a smooth wooden spoon and gives the chunky sauce a quick stir before turning away. It reminds her of vomit. Vomit and blood.

She cuts half an onion. She's grateful that it doesn't make her tear up, because if it did she wouldn't be able to stop it. So she cuts. She listens to the melancholy thump of the knife against the board, again and again and again, until the onion is in dices. She adds it to the sauce. She stirs. It looks chunkier now.

Next are mushrooms. She's not sure how long they've been in her fridge, but they look good enough, so she dumps them out of their foam little container and digs the knife into their flesh. She chops until they stop looking human.

The last thing is a tomato, and she reaches for it. The knife slices hesitantly this time, because this is the muscle. Not the blood or the vomit or the flesh. The muscle, that moves and works and _bleeds_, and suddenly she's fighting down bile.

The sauce doesn't need a fresh tomato. It's already tomatoy enough.

She adds garlic powder, and dried basil. She stirs.

She waits.

* * *

Steve was first because Steve was always first.

"Mission is a go." He said next to her, speaking into his comm. link.

"I read you." Tony responded, already in the second-floor window. If there were any alarms, they were silent. Tony gave a long, low whistle under his breath. Natasha shifted her weight, throwing a nervous glance back at the dead guards. Their blood washed away with the rain. Down, down the mountain. "This thing's state of the art."

"Can you break it?" Steve was asking.

For the first time all afternoon, Tony was in a joking mood. Figures. "Who do you think you're talking to, Gramps? Alarm's already down. You guys are clear."

Natasha looked over at Steve through her wet hair and felt a rain drop slide down her neck. She shivered.

To his credit, Cap didn't seem annoyed by the comment. Instead, he just glanced down at his wristwatch. Natasha leaned over his shoulder and checked the time too. They were two minutes ahead of schedule. Good.

Natasha took a squishy step foreword and fit the key she'd nabbed from one of the dead guards in the lock. It fit, it clicked, and then they were inside. "I'm in." Clint said in her ear.

Steve followed her, adjusting his backpacks over his shoulder. He had two eighty-gallon hiking backpacks over his shoulders, and Natasha had another one. Each was filled with a complicated set of wires and a weaving pile of electronics that would hopefully level the building. They weren't set yet.

"We're in, too." She responded.

The building is unsurprisingly quiet. Anyone who was there was probably locked away in an office or a lab, developing whatever they were working on. This wasn't the most dangerous mission she'd ever been on. In fact, it was hardly even difficult. The Avengers were borderline too good for this kind of stuff. But it was personal for Tony. They all respected that.

"How's it going out there, Thor?" Steve asked, making his way down the hallway in front of Natasha and pulling out a soggy, semi-accurate diagram of where to place the bombs.

"Quiet." Thor declared, his voice loud enough to rattle Natasha's brain. "And wet."

Steve smiled, briefly, fleetingly, and then it disappeared. Natasha found it hard to imagine Captain America anything other than what he was. He was the cornerstone, the weight-bearing pillar. He lifted all of them. Steve was the one that always tucked Tony into bed when the memories became too much and the alcohol got too strong. He was the one who took Tony's insults and arguments and turned them around with a level head. He was the one who'd talked Clint off the ledge, on that lonely, lonely night after Loki had ripped the archer apart. He was the one who proved to Clint that he was a part of the team, dammit, no matter which side he'd started on. He was the one that took all the punches, and he was the one that got right back up again.

But Captain America was Steve Rogers. And Steve Rogers was just a man.

Steve was an open wound, a throbbing, bleeding, unhealable wound. They all saw it. No one could get close enough, he wouldn't let them. Steve was too hell-bent on trying to prove himself, to keep his place as their leader. To keep their respect. He wouldn't stop, he wouldn't _stop _getting up after he'd been punched down. They watched as he shivered when the freezer opened. They watched his eyes glaze over and his breath catch, and then they watched as the ice cleared from his eyes and he schooled his face. They watched. He pretended.

Natasha pulled herself to the present and followed him down the darkened hallway.

Inside, the rain sounded worse. It kept pouring, pounding against bedrock and concrete and the gray infiltrated everywhere.

"Do you hear that?" Steve asked, and she glanced up at him sharply. They were standing in a lab that looked oddly like a high school chemistry class. The blinds were closed, but the room was still gray. Gray gray gray.

She set her bag down and pulled out the first explosive. It was a small blob of C4 and a transmitter. "Hear what?" She asked as Steve set his bags down too.

He scratched his neck and looked down at her, kneeling next to the bomb. "You finish here. I'm going to go check it out."

She let him go. She let him walk out the door, because he was Captain _Freaking _America, and he could do anything. Tony would tell him that when he was in an especially giving mood and he could tell that Cap needed it. Everyone would agree.

"What do you have, Hawkeye?" Cap asked in her ear as he disappeared from the door.

Barton was quiet for a bit. "A few of 'em in here. They're starting something. Not sure what."

"Keep us posted. Bruce, Tony?" Cap continued, and now Natasha could only hear him through her ear. She went to work, attaching wires just as Stark had instructed her to.

"Almost through the firewall. Shouldn't be long now." Bruce replied. "I'm bored." Tony cut in.

"Good." Cap said. "We're still two under, so we're making good time." Natasha glanced at her watch. Now they were two and a half minutes under. That was good.

She waited until she was finished with her job before getting up and pressing her own comm.. "You find anything, Cap?" She asked, shouldering one of Steve's bags.

She was met with silence.

Natasha refused to let the worry creep in. "Cap?" She asks again, her voice softer.

More silence, this time it was longer and broader. There was only the rain.

"What's going on?" Clint asked.

Steve was first because he was always first.

* * *

She slid from the room. One down, two to go.

But Cap was still not back and he was still not responding. The team was hardly a team without him. Natasha could feel the worry creeping in. "Thor, get your Asgardian ass in here. You're on Cap duty." Tony was saying. They were taking shots in the dark. They knew it was bad, real bad. Where was he?

"Nat, keep it up with the bombs." Clint said quietly. "There's no sign of him in here. They're firing something up though. Should I make the move?"

There was silence. No one knew that answer. Only Steve did. "Wait." Bruce finally said. For a guy with all his issues, he was probably the most level headed one.

"I'm useless in here." Tony said suddenly. "Thor, you get first floor, and I'll take the second."

"Don't get yourselves caught." Natasha said, her voice strained as she adjusted her pack. Carrying two of those suckers was hard. She wondered how Steve did it.

"And don't come in here. Not until I know what's going on." Clint said.

There was silence. Natasha reached her next destination. "We will find him." Thor said, quietly, compassionately in her ear.

His words seemed empty. There was tension in the air, and her boots squeaked when she walked and how the hell did Cap manage to get taken on _this_ mission?

She worked on the second bomb. This time her hands trembled. She knew why.

That was the reason that spies can't have a family.

"Anything, Tony?" She asked, her fervent whisper more like a prayer than a question.

Nothing.

Nothing.

He was gone gone gone.

"Fuck." Clint whispered. His voice trembled. Another reason why spies don't have families. They can't have connections. They can't feel love. They don't get to have friends.

It gets in the way.

She half expected to find Tony in a corner somewhere, popping out to say _Boo_. He wouldn't do that, though. Tight spaces and bedrock didn't mix well for Tony. Rum and Coke mixed well, however, when he thought about those things.

Tony was a casserole of one part alone and three parts memories, with a dry crumble of offending humor to top off the edges. He was an ass, but he was lovable in a foreign way. He tried, he really tried. He just pretended like he didn't. He opened his home and kept the food stocked and the rooms cleaned. He kept making Clint new arrows when he couldn't sleep. He made fun of Cap, but that was only because Tony had never respected a man that much before. It was twisted logic, but it was a brand that was unique to Stark. They loved him for it, just as much as they hated him for it.

She finished the second bomb.

* * *

Halfway through her third, Bruce's ragged voice tore through her head. "Data's finished," He muttered.

"Where the hell are they?" Clint spat, "And what the hell is going on?"

Natasha didn't know whether he was referencing to his teammates or the science experiment going on below him. She didn't want to know. She worked diligently, connecting wires, and then finally she was done.

"Bruce, I'm coming to you." She said. "Thor?"

He didn't answer. Of course he didn't. What in the world could take down a god, a super soldier, and a man made of metal so silently? So quietly? There was still nothing but the rain. Clint and Bruce and Natasha each made a similar sound of intense worry. They knew their fellow Avengers could handle themselves, but they were so confused.

It made the fear worse.

They had each assumed the worst. And there was no conformation. But there hadn't been a denial yet, either. There was only the silence. And the rain. That god-awful, pounding, wet, slick, skin-on-skin sound that the rain made as it crashed and hit and bashed and tore.

She found her way to the second floor. There was a technician. Silently and efficiently, Natasha found her neck and pressed her arm around it. The girl dropped almost instantly. Not dead. Just knocked out. She'd be dead, however, very soon. As soon as she sent the signal, those bombs would go off.

They were still two minutes under. It didn't matter much, not anymore. They would spend all the time in the world trying to find the three lost Avengers, if they needed to.

Her chest hurt. It might have been the thin air. Or it might have been the complete and utter terror. She rounded a corner. She found the door. The terror came in waves, the fear breaking across her. She took a calming breath. She steeled herself.

She saw blood.

It was everywhere, saturating the room. There were TV screens where the cameras broadcasted what they picked up. Those were static, the images gray. They were spattered with blood. Thick and viscous, it ran down the screens like rain. Fresh. Salty. _Everywhere_.

The floor was slick and scarlet and she found the vomit already at her lips before she could swallow it away.

She slipped, hands falling into the pools, and her stomach heaved and heaved until there was nothing left by the terrible, heart-pounding pain that ate through her veins and cut off her circulation.

Oh God. So much red. Red red red. On her fingers. On her face. At her feet. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

She went into shock.

"Natasha?" One voice, a clear, beautiful, warm voice cut through the haze of complete insanity.

"Fuck, Clint." She whispered. She couldn't hold it back. She didn't want to. Her voice was low and throaty.

She felt twitchy and jerky and there was no way she could form a complete thought. Her vision was tinged with blurriness. She couldn't think or speak or even breathe.

She made the mistake of trying.

The scent hit her, dank and wet and metallic. Her stomach found more to throw up. Vomit and Blood.

There was a body in the corner.

There was a lump in her throat. No

No no no no no no no.

This was not happening. This was supposed to be an easy mission.

Her life was being ripped from her and she didn't know what she was going to do. She didn't know how to stop it. All she knew was the wetness in her eyes and beneath her hands.

She stood up. She didn't move any further into the room. She took a breath. She broke and then fixed herself again.

But her actions were like putting tape over a crack in a dam. They wouldn't work in the long run. But they would for now.

She didn't look at whose body it was. She already knew.

* * *

A watched pot never boils, they say.

Natasha's eyes never leave the pot, but her brain is far away.

It starts to bubble, making little popping sounds. She jerks away from the daydream and grabs the noodles. Spaghetti noodles. Whole wheat. Good for you.

She breaks them in half and sticks them in the watched pot that had actually boiled.

She gets a glass of water, but she is not thirsty. It reminds her of the rain.

* * *

Bruce, kind, sweet, brilliant Bruce, had always been in contest with Steve for the title of quietest. He kept to himself, more or less.

He was a brilliant man, soft-spoken but strong. He'd come to terms with himself and his anger a long time ago, giving him a refreshing sense of self-awareness. The Hulk was a part of him, and he had accepted that.

When he talked about the things he loves, like Betty and his work and, surprisingly, cheese flavored gold fish, he gets this fierce air of confident fervor. It's the kind that you look at and you understand every reason why he loves it, and it makes you smile as the words leave his mouth. It's the kind of ferocity that becomes violent when he's the Hulk, but is pretty damn endearing when he isn't.

Natasha refused to think of this. If she did, she would peel away the proverbial tape at the proverbial dam and then everything would rush her until she drowned in it all. She hiccupped. It tasted like stomach acid.

She stepped from the room, her boots squeaking even more now, "Bruce is down." She said, and heard Clint's intake of breath. He knew what it means.

They were the only two left.

She descended the stairs. Took out two people on the way. She reached the main floor, slunk through a back hallway. She came upon the main warehouse.

She had found nothing. Nothing at all but the blood.

There was something sitting on her chest, compressing her lungs so she can't breathe, squeezing her heart until it hurts every time it beats. Her ribs were cracking and her bones were shattering and the pain was more intense than anything she'd ever felt. Even in the Red Room.

She knew how this was going to end when she saw the hand.

It was detached, and shadowed. She didn't want to know whose it was, but from the color of the glove she figured it out.

Her mind shut off. There had to be some sort of experiment in there. Something big and quiet and lethal. Something that could scatter the floor in blood and tear someone limb from limb. An animal enhanced by the lab.

She hated herself.

She slid through the door, and in the center of the room there were scientists, oblivious to the intruders, working on some sort of machine that required a lot of sparks and light and smoke. It looked like it was glowing.

She looked away and her eyes met with Clint, standing high, high above them. His eyes were a haunted shade of darkness, reflecting the broken, bruised nature of his soul.

She loved him in that moment,

And then the moment broke.

The room shuddered, slightly at first. And then everything was shaking and fire spat from the door and she realized that a bomb has already reached its failsafe and gone off without her pressing the button.

She had screwed up.

The scientists looked up and the building was still shaking. Concrete began to crumble, but the building wasn't falling. They needed three bombs for that one.

A few scientists spotted her, but she killed them before anything could happen. She'd seen enough blood today. Blood of an enemy does not faze her.

She looked up to spot Clint. He was standing on that catwalk, three stories in the air, when it began to tremble.

Metal ground against metal.

A second bomb went off, bringing with it heat and flame and scorching, unforgiving pain. More metal ground, and more scientists scattered and more people were screaming. Natasha could only watch. Watch as the catwalk trembled and Clint sprinted to the other side.

"Get out of here!" He shouted at her! "Nat, _go!_" He yelled, his voice absorbed by the fire and thunder.

She ran. There was no other choice. She ran until she hit the cold, wet outdoors and ran until she felt the heat of a third explosion behind her. She had stopped running by the time the very earth underneath her trembled.

And then it fell, and her life was falling too. Falling falling, breaking, concrete dust exploding into her pores, roars reminding her of the Hulk roaring, her comm. link fuzzy in her ears.

There was nothing she could do. There was only the complete desperation as she yelled herself hoarse above the trembling explosion. She was yelling for a team that should be with her, for the family that was somewhere inside. For stupid SHIELD and their incomplete intel and for Clint, oh God, Clint.

For a moment she wished she was in there with them.

She kept screaming, her face heating up, her lungs clogged with rain water. There was no one to hear her. She kept waiting for Clint to crawl from the rubble, but he never did. He kept waiting for Tony to jump out and say April Fools but he never did. She waited for Bruce to hulk out and push the building remnants off of him and stomp over. For Steve to appear quietly at her side and ask if she was ok. They never did.

When the extraction comes at 2100 she is the only one left.

* * *

Natasha's meal is done cooking. But she doesn't want to eat it. She hasn't eaten in 25 hours or slept in 53, but she feels like she doesn't want to do either ever again.

She dumps the noodles into a bowl and spills the sauce over it. She mixes it together until the brown-beige noodles become red-tinged, floppy lengths of overgrown pasta.

She looks down at the food in the bowl and it slips from her hands,

The bowl shatters and the food spills everywhere. She stares at it for a little while, and then suddenly she is sobbing.

Not because she feels dead inside, emptier than a thousand year old grave. Not because there is nothing left, other than her throbbing wounds and her dead, black heart. Not because of an unredeemable red ledger or an emptiness so wide and flat that it seems never-ending. Not because of the darkness or the heaviness.

She is sobbing because of the spaghetti itself.

She'd made enough for six.

* * *

**It's my first attempt in the feels department. Tell me what you thought! Where can I improve? I'd love to hear your thoughts (as long as they are constructive and not downright mean) Thanks :D**


End file.
